Drug-selling street gangs aren't the threat they were in Rockford 20 years ago.

But newer factions are rearing their ugly heads, and the cops have been going after them in bigger ways the past several months.

With a third of the city's 20 homicides so far this year believed by police to be gang-related and a higher-than-ever 111 deaths in Winnebago County the result of drug overdoses — mostly heroin — gangs are a scourge for victims and the rest of us.

"The majority of what we deal with is drug-related," longtime local policeman Dominic Iasparro told me Tuesday.

Iasparro was deputy chief of the Rockford Police Department in the early 1990s when crack cocaine became the widespread menace in Rockford that it had become in other cities. He is now deputy chief of the Winnebago County Sheriff's Police and leader of the four-month-old Winnebago County Violent Crimes Task Force.

Two decades ago, gang violence was "out of control," he said. "There were two or three shooting victims at a time," he said. "The number of rounds being fired was extraordinary. We were hiring back 20 (officers) a night on overtime" to handle calls, he said.

The violence subsided within a few years after a series of early morning raids on July 28, 1993, when 250 federal and local agents arrested 31 people. Most of the violence was directly related to the Black Gangster Disciples street gang and its sale of crack cocaine, Iasparro said. Leader Karl Fort was tried in 1994 and is serving a life term in a Louisiana penitentiary, and other gang members are serving life terms as well. In 1994, Rockford recorded 30 homicides, still a record for one year. Iasparro didn't know exactly how many of those killings were gang-related, though he said it was more than this year.

Rockford's homicide toll so far this year is 20, with half a dozen attributed to gang-related violence, Iasparro said.

Though gang violence isn't as bad as it was in the early 1990s, Iasparro said, "that's not to say it isn't dangerous and serious. It is."

The task force is targeting the most violent gang members and has made several arrests.

The task force includes representatives of law enforcement agencies in Rockford, Loves Park and Winnebago County, the Illinois State Police, and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives. The group works closely with the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The Rockford Police Department also has stepped up the fight against gangs, Lt. Patrick Hoey said. About 18 months ago, three detectives were in the Rockford police gang unit; now it's eight detectives and a sergeant. And since summer, the department has been saturating the southwest side of town, where there has been more gang activity, Hoey said. He said he is unsure why there's been an uptick in gang crime.

The majority of shootings now, Iasparro said, involve the Wacos, a subgroup and localized version of the Disciples that operates largely in far west Rockford near Concord Commons housing complex, and the Moes, a spinoff of the Vice Lords that mostly operates closer to the Fairgrounds Valley complex on the west side.

The Latin Kings also have a large presence and are involved mostly in southwest Rockford. The Insane Unknowns and the Satan Disciples are smaller groups, mostly dealing in far west and southeast Rockford, respectively.

All told, Iasparro estimates there could be up to 1,000 gang members in Rockford, though not all may be active in a gang.

Boone County State's Attorney Michelle Courier estimates there are dozens of gang members in Boone County, mostly the Latin Kings and the Surenos, rival gangs.

In 2009, she filed a lawsuit against the Latin Kings, which partly resulted in a move that allows police to arrest gang members who associate with each other in public. The suit "clearly sends a message that they are being watched," she said. Gangs were involved in a homicide last month in Belvidere, she said.

They are a "plague to the community," Courier said.

Today, local street gangs operate differently than they did two decades ago.

The Disciples and Vice Lords had structured hierarchies and mostly sold drugs from fortified drug houses, Iasparro said.

Street gangs today aren't well organized, most street dealers are in their late teens and early 20s, and drug markets are mobile, Iasparro said.

"You call a cellphone number, and somebody meets you in a parking lot in 10 minutes," Iasparro said. "The transaction takes 10 seconds."

And rather than crack, gangs these days sell a lot of heroin, Iasparro said.

Users "don't just buy one $20 bag, they use five bags a day," he said. And with a $100-a-day habit, many users steal from family members and stores to pay for their drugs, he added.

So where did the gangs come from?

Iasparro said Rockford-area men who were sent to prisons in the 1970s made friends with gang members from Chicago and brought the gangs to Rockford. And young men living in poverty in single-parent homes found they could gain a sense of belonging in a gang while selling drugs and making a lot of money.

Murders and overdose deaths are the worst of gang violence.

But there's more bad. If you run a business, do prospective employees "want to move here when they read about drive-by shootings?" Iasparro said. "And the reality is that in some neighborhoods in the middle of the night you hear multiple gunshots and then you hear sirens.